The embattled Director-General of the Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council (PFIPC), Prince Adeniyi Matthew Adeyemi, has formally requested the House of Representatives to grant him administrative clearance to appear before its investigative panel.
Currently in custody, Adeyemi, through his legal team, maintains that any report on the controversy that excludes his testimony would be incomplete and fundamentally flawed.
In a statement issued late Sunday by his lawyers, led by Festus Akhigbe, Adeyemi rejected the emerging narrative that paints him as a lone operator who single-handedly invented a federal agency. He argued that the administrative trail left by the PFIPC tells a different story, one involving multiple arms of government that formally recognised, funded and staffed the council.
The Inspector-General of Police, Olatunji Disu, had earlier told the ad-hoc committee, chaired by Rep. Yusuf Gagdi, that police could not produce Adeyemi without court clearance. Adeyemi’s team is now pressing the lawmakers themselves to facilitate his appearance so he can speak directly on the matter.
According to the lawyers, the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation acknowledged PFIPC documentation and facilitated office space for the council within the Federal Secretariat Complex in Abuja. The Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation and the Central Bank of Nigeria, they claimed, processed administrative budget codes, granted self-accounting status, posted federal civil servants to the council and opened operational accounts.
The Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, the statement continued, approved an establishment structure and recruitment waivers that allowed the onboarding of 314 personnel. The Budget Office of the Federation and the National Assembly processed documentation that culminated in the insertion of a ₦1.302 billion allocation for the PFIPC in the 2026 Appropriation Act passed by both chambers and signed into law by the President.
Adeyemi’s lawyers further noted that heads of major security agencies attended programmes organised by the council. They alleged that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission allocated a property to the PFIPC, requested a ₦300 million processing fee, and that EFCC leadership presented a plaque of recognition to the council’s leadership.
“It is an administrative impossibility for an unassisted individual to mislead multiple agencies of the Federal Government,” the legal team stated. They accused authorities of making Adeyemi a scapegoat to mask deeper institutional lapses, procedural breakdowns and internal approvals within the government machinery.
The controversy erupted after the Presidency publicly disowned the PFIPC, declaring that the body was never established by law, executive order or presidential directive. Despite this, the council had operated for years from the Federal Secretariat, engaging government institutions, foreign investors and diplomatic missions while presenting itself as an official vehicle for attracting foreign investment and interventions into Nigeria.
The Presidency subsequently directed the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) to investigate the council’s establishment, operations and funding. Lawmakers have since questioned how an entity later declared unauthorised secured budgetary allocation, operated bank accounts and used government insignia without raising earlier red flags.
Appearing before the House panel, the Director-General of the Budget Office, Tanimu Yakubu, maintained that his office did not create the PFIPC but merely processed submissions based on existing government records and administrative codes. That explanation has shifted focus to the wider network of agencies involved in budget preparation, verification and approval.
Adeyemi’s team insists the committee must hear from the principal figure at the centre of the storm. “Any investigative outcome or final legislative report produced without affording our client a direct hearing would be fundamentally flawed, incomplete and a breach of the constitutional right to fair hearing,” the lawyers said.
The PFIPC affair has evolved beyond the question of a single alleged fake agency. It has become a broader test of institutional integrity, exposing weaknesses in document verification, inter-agency coordination, budget scrutiny and oversight within Nigeria’s federal bureaucracy. The parallel probes by the ICPC and the National Assembly will determine how the council came into being, whether public funds were improperly accessed, and whether public officials will be held accountable for any lapses that allowed the arrangement to persist for years.
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